How Sloths Went From the Seas to the Trees

PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to http://to.pbs.org/DonateEons ↓ More info below ↓ The story of sloths is one of astounding ecological variability, with some foraging in the seas, others living underground, and others still hiding from predators in towering cliffs. So why are their only living relatives in the trees? Thanks to Ceri Thomas for allowing us to use few sloth reconstructions! Check out more of Ceri s paleoart at http://alphynix.tumblr.com and http://nixillustration.com And thanks as always to Franz Anthony and everyone at http://252mya.com for their great paleoart. Produced for PBS Digital Studios. Super special thanks to the following Patreon patrons for helping make Eons possible: Katie Fichtner, Aldo Espinosa Zúñiga, Anthony Callaghan, Esmeralda Rupp-Spangle, Gregory Donovan, Ehit Dinesh Agarwal, الخليفي سلطان, Gabriel Cortez, Marcus Lejon, Anel Salas, Robert Arévalo, Robert Hill, Kelby Reid, Todd Dittman, Betsy Radley, PS, Colin Sylvester, Philip Slingerland, John Vanek, Jose Garcia, Noah offitzer, Eric Vonk, Tony Wamsley, Henrik Peteri, Jonathan Wright, Jon Monteiro, James Bording, Brad Nicholls, Miles Chaston, Michael McClellan, Jeff Graham, Maria Humphrey, Nathan Paskett, Connor Jensen, Sapjes, Daisuke Goto, Hubert Rady, Yuntao Zhou, Gregory Kintz, Tyson Cleary, Chandler Bass, Maly Lor, Joao Ascensao, Tsee Lee, Sarah Fritts, Ruben Winter, Ron Harvey Jr, Jacob Gerke, Alex Yan If you d like to support the channel, head over to http://patreon.com/eons and pledge for some cool rewards! Want to follow Eons elsewhere on the internet? Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/eonsshow Twitter - https://twitter.com/eonsshow Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/eonsshow/ References: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10722-007-9250-5 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00438243.2012.646145 http://www.pnas.org/content/102/33/11763 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-paleontology/article/increased-xenarthran-diversity-of-the-great-american-biotic-interchange-a-new-genus-and-species-of-ground-sloth-mammalia-xenarthra-megalonychidae-from-the-hemphillian-late-miocene-of-jalisco-mexico/00EA80D119B2FE221240A3EB67F954AA https://www.jstor.org/stable/2400207 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1096-3642.2007.00240.x https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10420940.2016.1223654 https://palaeo-electronica.org/2009_3/189/index.html https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10914-017-9415-8 https://eurekamag.com/research/020/408/020408865.php https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1671/2429b https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10914-014-9268-3 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10914-014-9280-7 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10914-014-9274-5 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3973278/ http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1671/0272-4634(2008)28%5B918:TASTMX%5D2.0.CO%3B2 https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article/140/2/255/2624254 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10914-011-9174-x https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25861559 https://peerj.com/articles/5600/ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1671/0272-4634(2000)020%5B0601%3ALBPSAD%5D2.0.CO%3B2 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233548931_Diet_and_isotopes_of_Late_Pleistocene_ground_sloths_first_results_for_Lestodon_and_Glossotherium_Xenarthra_Tardigrada